Mini Lebkuchen Doughnuts for Christmas

Lebkuchen is a German biscuit-cum-cake, a bit like gingerbread, that is traditionally eaten at Christmas; they are easy to find in UK supermarkets but having also lived in Germany for two separate periods between the ages of 18 and 22 (both including Christmas) I became quite keen on them.

I thought about making some Lebkuchen at Christmas but didn't get around to it; instead I decided to make some baked mini doughnuts using my Wilton doughnut pan which I was going to flavour with gingerbread spices, but then remembered I had a small packet of actual mixed spices for Lebkuchen that a German colleague had given me a little while ago that I'd never used. So the doughnuts tasted of Lebkuchen and I glazed them with chocolate as Lebkuchen often are.

I used this pan and the Wilton recipe to make Halloween doughnuts last year though I found the batter really thick - possibly because my buttermilk had set quite thick in the fridge - so also added some milk, and switched the plain flour and baking power for self-raising flour as follows:

300g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
175ml buttermilk
50ml milk
2 tbsp. butter, melted
1/2 x 15g sachet of Ostmann Lebkuchen gewurtz
to decorate: 100g plain chocolate

As an alternative to the ready made Lebkuchen spice mix, you could use:
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1/4 tsp allspice

Preheat oven to 200C. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl until you have a batter that is a dropping consistency.

Grease a doughnut pan - you could also try making these as cupcakes in a cupcake tin - and drop in the batter so each doughnut ring is 2/3 full. This quantity will make two batches of 10-12 doughnuts. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes.

Allow to cool in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack. Melt some plain chocolate in a microwave or bain-marie and spread over one side of the doughnuts and allow to set.

I allowed myself to try a bit even though I'm supposed to be cutting out sugar - it is Christmas after all and I hoped that a few bites wouldn't hurt - and they were delicious, tasting a lot like lebkuchen!

Christmas Stollen Bundt

Stollen is a fruit cake containing candied fruit, nuts and marzipan, usually dusted with icing sugar. It originally comes from Germany and is traditionally eaten at Christmas time, so I thought it would be a nice bake for several reasons. Firstly, it's a traditional festive Christmas bake; secondly, it begins with S, which is this month's letter for Alphabakes, and thirdly it's meant to keep for a few weeks and I thought it would make a good edible gift for my grandparents as they could eat it after Christmas and not need to use it up right away when there is so much other food around.

I found a recipe on the Telegraph website and though there are a lot of ingredients, it's quite simple to make, and the smell is delicious. I did adapt the recipe so this is what I used:

100g candied mixed peel
50g flaked almonds
250g raisins or sultanas
about 300ml pear cider
250g flour
50g sugar
half a sachet of dried yeast
150g butter, softened
50g marzipan
75ml milk
pinch of salt
1 vanilla pod
grated rind of 1 lemon
icing sugar to dust

First wash the sultanas in hot water and drain. I have no idea why you do this - I can't imagine it's to make them swell up as you go on to soak them overnight. Can anyone explain?

Combine the sultanas in a bowl with the mixed peel and nuts.

The recipe I used then says "cover with rum and leave overnight". However, in the ingredients list, it says you need 1 tbsp rum... which I didn't see until later and found very confusing. Are you meant to sprinkle 1 tbsp of rum over the top, or completely cover the fruit and nuts in rum, in which case I reckon you'd need about two cups? Again, if anyone knows....

I only discovered at the last minute that I didn't have any rum, which shouldn't have been a surprise as I don't drink the stuff, but I had thought I might have a bottle knocking around at the back of the cupboard but it turned out to be gin. I didn't think gin-soaked fruit would quite work for a stollen, so instead I used the best part of a 500ml bottle of pear cider. I think that's suitably festive!

Leave the fruit and nuts overnight to steep.

The next day, heat the milk until it is lukewarm and mix with the yeast. The recipe says to add "enough flour to create a mud-like starter culture". Being a bit more specific would have helped as I had no idea how much flour to use, I think I used about 80g in the end. I'm not even sure what texture mud is meant to be - having just been to Yellowstone, and seen a lot of mud pools I can verify that it's all different! You do need to keep track of how much flour you use though as this comes out of the 250g allowance - the recipe didn't spell that out which tripped me up later!

Anyway when you have your starter culture of whatever consistency you want it to be, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 20 mins. The volume is supposed to triple.

Next you need room temperature butter. Unfortunately my heating wasn't working that day and my house was freezing so the butter was just as hard as it was in the fridge, so I used the microwave to soften it. (You'll be pleased to hear a nice man called Frank came round and sorted my heating out so I'm nice and warm again).

Cream the butter, marzipan, sugar, salt, lemon rind, vanilla and cardamom.

Add the proven starter and remaining flour. This is the point where I realised I hadn't measured how much flour I'd used for the starter culture, forgetting it was meant to come out of the 250g, so I estimated how much I thought I'd used.

Knead the dough until it binds. The recipe says to do this on an unfloured surface but I found I could do it just fine in my mixing bowl.

Pour the fruit and rum/cider/ whatever liquid you used over the top, and work in with your hands until it is evenly mixed.

Cover with a damp cloth, put in a warm place - I had to use my oven on its lowest temperature as my house was still cold at this point - and let it rise for about 90 mins. At this point I also wondered again how much rum/liquid I was supposed to have used, as the mixture looked very wet.

The recipe I used tells you to form the mixture into a loaf - it doesn't even mention using a tin, and mine was definitely far too wet for that. In any case I'd already decided I wanted to make a bundt - since this is a German cake, and a bundt is also a German invention, and I had a silicon bundt tin I'd bought in Germany and hadn't used yet. In fact this was my first bundt!

I cooked it at about 160C for about an hour - I think I gave it a little longer as the mixture was so wet, though towards the end the raisins started to slightly take on a burnt appearance even though I had covered the tin with greaseproof paper. After leaving the stollen to cool in the tin it did firm up a lot though.

It turned out neatly, albeit slightly overdone, and I dusted the top with icing sugar.

I'm going to take this to my grandparents when I visit them this weekend. Apparently the stollen is best left for two weeks before it is eaten so maybe I should have made it last week, but I didn't know that and it's a bit late now! But people always have so much food at Christmas, hopefully they will appreciate something that will keep a bit longer and not need to be eaten right away.

I'm sending this Stollen to Alphabakes, hosted this month by my co-host Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter we are baking with in December is S.

Calendar cakes, hosted by Rachel of Dolly Bakes and Laura of Laura Loves Cakes, has Christmas as its theme this month and a Stollen is definitely a festive bake so I am sending this their way as well.

Baking with Spirit, a blog challenge hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, is inviting bakes using any type of alcohol this month, and since there is cider in my Stollen, I'm sending this in!

 And finally I came across a blog challenge on Nivedhanam's site and cohosted by My Cook Book, looking for vegetarian treats and eggless bakes. There are no eggs in stollen and it uses ingredients that are suitable for vegetarians so I am sending my Stollen to the challenge.

A German meal: remembering a loved one

Kirchzarten

 

When I was 18, fresh from A-Levels, I took myself off to Germany for a gap year. This was at a time when a gap year was relatively uncommon, at least amongst anyone I knew - my classmates and friends weren't the type to go backpacking round Asia to "discover themselves". I'd applied to read German and French at Cambridge, but was dreading the point during the interview at which they would question my commitment to the subject, and ask how many times I had visited each country. Due to a combination of circumstances, finances and a family preference for holidays in the UK, I'd never actually set foot in Germany and had only been to France once. I was convinced I wouldn't get in to university (or *that* university, anyway) if it looked like I wasn't that interested in the cultures and countries I wanted to spend the next three years studying - though in hindsight I think I was completely wrong and this wouldn't have stopped me getting in! But at the time this worry was at the forefront of my mind so I blithely ticked the "defer entry" box on the UCAS form, not really thinking about what it would mean to spend a whole year abroad while all my friends were off to university back home.

I'm not entirely sure where the idea of being an au pair came from, but really I don't think I could have done anything else - living in one place, with a family who would look after me and (hopefully) treat me as one of their own was going to be a big enough challenge and probably the only thing that my parents would have agreed to, and I was hardly the brave, independent type who wanted to strike out on their own.

So with the guarantee of a place at Cambridge for the following year (in the end, the interview was a breeze, and they didn't ask me once how many times I had been to Germany!), I scoured the Lady magazine to find myself an au pair position, and ended up packing my bags and moving to a village just outside the beautiful southern German town of Freiburg. There I lived for 11 months with a wonderful woman named Gila, her two children and their two cats, made some new friends and explored lots of new places, none of which I will ever forget, had one very hairy attempt at driving on the other side of the road (never to be done again), discovered I was hopeless at housework, but good at helping with homework, and that I hated spinach, but that Miracle Whip is the best mayonnaise I had ever tasted, had my first takeaway pizza (which I loved), tried tequila (which I hated), hung out with au pairs from other countries (some of whom I am still friends with, 15 years later), had my dad tape every episode of Friends and send them over on VHS in the post, got my ears pierced, almost had my first skiing lesson but chickened out, and most importantly, learnt how to cook.

Freiburg cathedral and flower market

It's funny how some of the most vivid memories I have of my time there revolve around food. The first takeaway pizza I ever had, where I didn't realise we were going to get a whole pizza each, but when I asked for seafood, wasn't expecting it to have little tiny squid all over it, which I couldn't eat until one of the children took them off.... The local ice cream parlour, where you could have flavours I'd never seen in England, like apple or yogurt.... One of the children's favourite meals, of mashed potato, spinach and fried egg, all of which I hated and would cook for them then pick at, and fill up on Ritter Sport chocolate in my room later.... The time I made mashed potato too runny, and the children thought it was soup....The bowl of salad we had before every meal, which was a new concept to me, but to this day I still prefer German salad dressing... On my first day with the family, taking a huge gulp of water and discovering it was carbonated, which I'd never had before, and almost wanting to spit it out in disgust.... The long walks up to Shauinsland and drinking Apfelsaftschorle at the top....

Freiburg cathedral

Having to bring jars of Hellmann's mayonnaise every time I came over from England, as it was Gila's favourite and you couldn't buy it in Germany at the time.... The delicious German bread and all the different sliced ham and cheeses....eating a Bratwurst in a bun on my Saturdays off as I walked around the shops in Freiburg....the simple food we would eat during the week like potato and broccoli bake and then the big roasts and casseroles Gila would cook when she was home at the weekends...The fantastic triple-layered chocolate cake they made for my 19th birthday.... The amazing weekend brunches, where we would fetch fresh rolls from the baker, warm them in the oven, and lay out platters of ham and cheese. The orange juice had to be poured into wine glasses, and the stereo had to be playing classical music, then we could all sit down to eat and wish each other "Guten!".

A Freiburger Lange Rote

 



Sadly, Gila - the mother of my au pair family - passed away last month after a long illness. The last time I saw her was three years ago - when she found out I had been suddenly left by my partner of 11 years, and that new year might be a difficult time as we'd first met on a new year's eve, she immediately picked up the phone and invited me to Germany to stay. Which is how I found myself on new year's eve 2009 standing outside with neighbours who remembered me from over a decade earlier, sharing hot drinks and soup as we watched the fireworks, then the Christmas tree getting knocked over as we all piled back in the house (it wasn't me, I swear!) - and feeling like despite only having lived there for a year, more than ten years earlier, a little part of me felt like I had come back home. It seemed somehow right that in the eulogy at her funeral, a great deal was made of her generosity, her willingness to open her home to family and friends (or waifs and strays - I remember the time I was with her in the car and she picked up a hitchhiker, and insisted on buying him lunch). She was also an excellent judge of character, a perceptive listener, and full of energy - I remember her taking up flamenco lessons, but it was more than that - more than anyone else I've ever met, she had a lust for life and a sort of calm inner strength that had taken her through heartache and tragedy and yet made her always seem to enjoy life.

It always seemed very apt that the nearest train station to their house is called Himmelreich - Paradise. That Christmas three years ago was the last time I saw Gila, though we'd been in touch since, and this summer her son came to stay with me in London - it was amazing to see that the little boy who had been 7 when I was his au pair was now a strapping young man of 22! At the funeral I met some other au pairs, including an English woman who had come a few years before me, who I'd always heard the kids talk about, and a Czech girl who came the year after me, who greeted me with the words "Finally I get to meet the au pair they always talked about!". I think it's a wonderful tribute to Gila that there are so many young women and men around the world who had opportunities and experiences they may not otherwise have had, in some cases for those who came from poorer countries for a better life, and who may have only lived with Gila for a year, but who were treated like part of her family for the rest of her life. Sie wird uns fehlen.

I feel like it would be a fitting tribute to the woman who - other than my own mother - taught me how to cook - to make myself a little German meal.

My wanderings around Freiburg also took me into a supermarket, of course... I intended to maybe just buy a jar of Miracle Whip to take back home but went a bit overboard and ended up bringing home a suitcase that weighed 5kg more than on the way out!

So in memory of happy times, I started off with a glass of Apfelschorle - apple spritzer, made from apple juice and soda water in whatever ratio you prefer. I bought the glass as a souvenir too!

I didn't want to bring back fresh food in my suitcase so I popped into Lidl the day after I got back, and bought some Bockwurst

I also decided to make Kartoffelpuffer - potato cakes. To begin, peel some potatoes

Then grate them, raw

Put into a bowl and squeeze out the exess liquid. Mix in one egg, and enough plain flour so the mixture can be handled and isn't too wet. Also season with salt and pepper.

Heat a frying pan and add a little oil. Take a handful (or spoonful) of the potato mixture and flatten into a circular shape in the pan. Fry for a few minutes on each side until golden.

When ready, serve with Apfelmus - it comes in a jar like apple sauce but is smoother, like apple puree.

I did take a photo of the final meal on a plate - I had two Kartoffelpuffer and a Bockwurst. Until I realised that the shape - and the slightly puckered end of the sausage - looked quite dodgy and not the sort of thing I should be uploading to the internet at all! I only realised after I'd finished eating and looked at the photo so it was too late to take another but trust me, it was quite funny!

For dessert I couldn't resist opening my stash of Ritter Sport I'd brought back from Germany. This is only a small part of it as I gave a lot to my boyfriend too. There are some new flavours I haven't seen before, but 15 years ago my favourite was the yellow packet on the left, which has cornflakes in the chocolate.

I also made myself a packed lunch to take into work the next day, with the aforementioned Miracel Whip:

Some German bread and Mortadella sausage

This looks quite simple and doesn't make a great photo but tastes delicious!

The other shopping I bought back from Germany: Haribo gold bears and fizzy turtles, ice tea mix, Mezzo Mix - which is Coca-Cola with orange - some Spaetzle, which is like pasta, cheese fondue mix (bit random I know), salad dressing, vanilla sugar, and Dr Oetker carrot decorations for the next time I make a carrot cake.

I also bought some Christmas decorations - Germany does it so much better! - and a Freiburg chopping board...

... and a Freiburg/ Black Forest umbrella, that looks pretty cool when it's opened

A Baden (Freiburg is in Baden-Wurtemburg) cookery book, in German of course

And finally I was quite excited when I found a bundt tin for only 10 euros, as I don't actually have one yet but had been considering buying one for a while. I knew it would be a bit of a pain getting it back in my suitcase but decided it would be worth it.

When I got back to the house with all my shopping, we popped out to Aldi for some dishwasher tablets.. and lo and behold, they had the exact same size bundt mould, but in silicon (so a lot easier to carry home) and only 3 euros 50! So of course I had to buy this one as well.

And I may as well buy the mini bundt tin too! After all, the word bundt is derived from the German word Bundkuchen, a ring-shaped cake.

 

I'm looking forward to enjoying some German food and using my new bundt tins and next time I go back to Freiburg - for go back I will - I'm definitely taking my boyfriend with me. I can't wait to show him where I lived and I hope you've enjoyed me sharing these memories with you as well.